"I've been trying to think the whole way up from Melton. I suppose we shall have to behave as though the whole world knew Sonia was going to have a baby, it will have to be our child. And I suppose we shall live like other people who are kept from divorcing each other because of their children. Nominally we shall share the same house, and I suppose things can be arranged so as to spare Sonia.... But Burgess has convinced me. We've no right to think of ourselves or wash our hands of responsibility or try to score off other people at the expense of the child. I've promised her that she shall never see it.... I don't know, I suppose this is one of the things that men and women are temperamentally incapable of seeing with the same eyes; but, whoever the father was, whatever the history, I should have imagined that any woman would fight for her child against all the powers of creation; it was like a stab when Sonia first said she hoped the child would be born dead, it was another stab when she begged me—begged me to promise.... I promised right enough; it was the only thing to do, but I can't let it rest at that. If she's well enough to talk, I want to make everything quite plain to her now; otherwise I must explain afterwards...."
As we finished dinner, Lady Loring came down to say that Sonia was asking for her husband. I was not present, I am glad to say, at their interview, but it did not last more than five minutes, and at its end O'Rane looked in for a moment to say that he proposed to walk as far as the House of Commons for a breath of fresh air. Neither by word nor tone did he invite anyone to accompany him; and on his return he went upstairs without coming into the library. I called for a bulletin on my own account before retiring for the night, and Lady Loring warned me that I must be prepared for anything at any moment. Sonia had worked herself from hysteria into something hardly distinguishable from delirium; forgetting that she had already seen her husband, she had sent for him a second time and a second time implored him to spare her the sight of her own child; Lady Loring, who had been on duty all day, was not allowed to rest, and, as I passed the door, the lights were burning and I caught the sound of voluble chatter.
For an hour I tried to sleep, but the intermittent hum of voices, the creak of feet passing rapidly up and down the passage, still more the indefinable suspense kept me awake. For another hour I tried to read, but I was always interrupting myself to listen; and at two o'clock I pulled a dressing-gown over my pyjamas and returned to the library. To my surprise Bertrand was dozing over a book, while George sat writing letters on his knee. Both looked up, blinking with dull fatigue, as I came in.
"I wonder how long this racket's going on," Bertrand growled, as he walked across to fetch himself a drink. "She'll kill herself at this rate. And—what—almighty fools—the three of us are—to be here at all!"
"Has Raney come back yet?" George asked me. "I was told he'd gone for a walk—like a wise man."
"He was sitting outside her door, as I came down," I answered.
Grumbling inarticulately, Bertrand went back to his book. George looked at me long enough to see that I was too tired to talk, then began a fresh letter. I prowled in front of the bookcases, trying to find something that I had the mental energy to read. It was shortly after four when O'Rane hurried silently into the room and telephoned for the doctor.
5
Thirty hours—the fag-end of a broken night, a day and another night—passed before O'Rane appeared. The painful silence of the house was violated only by guardedly light steps and hushed voices. Bertrand and George took their meals at the club; I stayed behind, neglecting my work and subsisting on tinned tongue, stale bread and cold water, to run errands, answer telephone calls and carry up trays of food to Lady Loring. At first I believed that poor Sonia was trying to hypnotise herself and intensify her own tortures, but in time a new gravity settled on the faces of the doctor and nurse.